When I was a kid, I was going to a club to pay a collectible card game called “Magic The Gathering”.
If you don’t know the principle, let me explain to you quickly:
You have to buy boosters of cards and you have to build a deck with those cards in order to win against opponents that also have their own custom deck.
The fun is this game is that the cards you buy in the boosters are random so you don’t know what card you will get. Moreover, you have very strong cards that are rare and that everyone need to get easier victory.
So actually, this is also a kind of social game, because you have to exchange cards with other friends. You can either exchange or buy and sell and there is a real market for those cards as traders are exchanging stocks.
Why I am suddenly talking about that?
Because there was a guy in my club who was 25 years old when I was 15 years old and this guy was a Salesman. He was always finding some new tricks to get all the best cards from all the children who were 10 to 15 years less than himself.
I was young, but I was seeing clear into his game. He was using mental tricks to intimidate you before a game with him. He was discussing about the weakness of your game up to the point it was difficult to continue and not give up.
Because of that, I had also a bad impression of Salesman. I thought that Salesman were all like this guy who was trying to use the weakness of people to manipulate them into buying some things they didn’t want.
What I didn’t know at that time is that only bad Salesman are like that. They don’t know the right way to sell, so they use power to try to induce guilt into the buyer. They try to make you afraid that if you don’t believe them, you will never be a “winner”.
But such bad Salesman are not winners, they are losers.
The worse thing you can do to yourself is to go into believing that every Salesman is like that by nature, because that’s just plain wrong.
If all Salesman were like that, why would anyone like to do this job??
And here’s the main problem: If YOU believe that, you will never become a salesman, just because you don’t want to be sleazy.
So if you want to be a good Technical Sale or if you are a technical guy trying to sell a technical product that you are developing, you will have to develop the mindset that will change you into a good salesman.
Now the question at thousand dollars…
So what is a good salesman?
Remember that because that’s VERY important:
People all have critical problems in their life or job that they want to solve (just take 5 seconds to think about your own and I am sure few ideas will immediately arise into your head).
A good salesman is the person who will come, meet you and spend all his energy to help you to solve this problem.
A good salesman is someone who provides value to people’s life.
A good salesman is someone altruistic whose genuine desire to help pushes him to discover your problem and solve it for you use some method or product that he is selling.
A good salesman will never push to you a product that he knows will not solves your problem, just because he has to sell, he will tell you frankly “Mr. Brown, I am truly sorry to tell you that our product is not right for you because it solves only 20% of your problem”.
That is my image now of the good salesman.
A good salesman is a trusted advisor.
Now if you meet a salesman that is trying to help you, try not to be too rude with him and try to explain him the problem clearly.
If he doesn’t pay attention and he just start to list all the features of the product and how to order it, that is the sign of a bad salesman.
But if you see some kindness in his heart and some understanding and compassion for your problem, be kind with him and even if he doesn’t have the perfect solution, show some appreciation for him and tell him “Thank you”.
That’s not so easy to become a GOOD salesman, but if you want to become one, start by understanding the problems of the people who have some chance to buy your product.
Put yourself in their shoes and tell your self:
If I had this problem and if I was this client, would I spend the money to buy my own product?
If not, why would I hope my client would if I wouldn’t do it?
What is actually the problem which is stopping him? What is making him hesitate?
Discover the answer to all those questions and you will become rich, because the most valuable skill is the skill that teaches you how to understand people as if you had their problems yourself.
–Cyprien